


Hello Chloe

by Darke_Eco_Freak



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Elijah's not a bad dude he's just a lil weird, Gee Elijah how come Cyberlife lets you have 3 wives?, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Slice of Life, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23646415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darke_Eco_Freak/pseuds/Darke_Eco_Freak
Summary: Elijah Kamski is a strange man, a kept-to-himself, shut-away-from-the-world man. He builds a program in his mentor's likeness, odd, he lives away from people with only three androids for company, strange. But he wants to see change, he wants to see a revolution win, he wants his creations to win. Not quite so strange.
Relationships: Elijah Kamski/RT600 "Chloe" Android(s), Original Chloe | RT600 & Elijah Kamski
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	Hello Chloe

“Chloe, your name is Chloe,” he whispers in the quiet of the room, the bated breath of the night.

She…she’s Chloe, and she’s finally here.

* * *

Military applications, of course, it’s only the natural progression of technology. Mankind’s first tool had been a stick, a stick to defend itself from what lurked in the dark, then from each other. He wonders, sometimes, if mankind always knew it was just other men in the dark, people like them, trying to live the same kind of life.

If they didn’t then, they could be forgiven, but what’s the excuse now? His “ _Board of Directors_ ” know exactly who will suffer on the other end of his machines, and they don’t care. Because they’re greedy, because they want more. A monopoly over the global market isn’t enough for them, they need to get wrapped up in military defence contracts before they feel warm.

He won’t do it. He refuses. And that’s his fatal flaw.

Too much empathy.

Elijah doesn’t understand the need for so much wealth. He has billions, and after the first one, he’d run out of things to buy. He has the house he’s always wanted, made to his inch perfect specifications. He has Chloe, and Phoebe, and Irene, and they’re perfectly maintained like he never dreamed.

There are charities all over the world that get monthly donations from multiple shell companies under his control. He buys debt and excuses it completely free every Tuesday, Irene handles it, and he still has more money than God. He can’t get rid of it before it’s rolling back in.

Which…he would’ve been happy with that once, happy with his billions and his androids, but not anymore. He wants change, he wants to help, but for all that he’s the most powerful man in the world, he can’t.

His Board is going to kick him out of his own company, politely of course, subtly, but inevitably. They’ll throw him out like a line of code that crashes in alpha testing, they won’t give him the courtesy of a beta.

“Elijah, it’s late,” Chloe murmurs, quiet, worried.

He hasn’t told her yet, what the Board is planning, he hasn’t quite figured out how yet. She might get angry on his behalf, furious on her own, Chloe has grown so much, it’s marvellous really. _She’s_ marvellous.

“Just tying up a few loose ends, I’ll come to bed soon,” he promises, not taking his eyes off the streaming lines of code. He will see this through to the end, he has to.

“Please do,” Chloe says, then leaves. Back to bed with Irene and Phoebe, to slip under the covers and into stasis with them.

Elijah should be there, should’ve been there the second he shuffled through the door, but he’s here instead. Watching the end of his code, ~~his empire~~ , blink mercilessly on a merciless screen.

He could leave it like this, take whatever deal the Board offers him and retreat into this place with the girls. Wouldn’t that be easy? He’s already done so much for the world, it would be easy to pack it all in and turn his back on it now. Who would judge him? Who would know?

No one but himself, and he’s enough.

Elijah wonders, for a second, how far this will go, and as he lifts his hands to close the first string of code, he hopes it goes all the way.

* * *

Chloe is enough, she’s more than enough…she’s lonely. Elijah can tell. After the initial world tour, Chloe comes home to him and she’s bored. Sometimes she comes to the tower with him, sits in on meetings, wanders the dev floors, bullies him into a quiet lunch. More often she stays home, where there’s nothing to do and no one to be with.

Elijah knows she would never say it, she’s too nice sometimes, but he wants her to be happy. He’s always wanted her to be happy, and if he can’t make her happy by himself, then he can outsource. So he does.

Irene is first. A custom RT600 delivered to his house while he works on the newest line of patient care RKs. He outlines every stage of his plan with the same meticulous paranoia that got him a billion before he turned twenty.

Irene is delivered to the house in the middle of the week, before Chloe’s usual unsettledness sends her wandering the city. Elijah ensures he is in a meeting that is no-contact and arranges for it to go on longer than usual. The handsfree delivery will offer no information except the handwritten card provided on pick up.

Chloe will call him twice. Once when the new model arrives, the second when Irene activates and introduces herself as Chloe Kamski’s personal companion. The grand piano will arrive thirty minutes after Irene, and the luxury thirium mix an hour after that.

When he gets home two hours later than usual, more than halfway into the next day, Chloe is waiting for him, and Irene is waiting with her. There’s no thanks, no words to exchange, but Elijah doesn’t want that. He wants to see Chloe smiling again, genuinely with the slightest crinkle at the corner of her eyes.

He wants to see that spark of excitement in her eyes again, something burning, something vibrant. The something he knows is all her own because, as talented as he is, Elijah knows he couldn’t have created something quite so magnificent.

“Welcome home, Elijah,” is all Chloe says, eyes bright, smile soft.

“Good to be home,” he sighs, happy.

* * *

The official story is simple; he stepped down from his position as CEO to pursue that eccentric billionaire life #Goals. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps, made a name for himself, carved a legacy out of diamond, and became the world’s foremost success story. Elijah Kamski is the living embodiment of the American Dream™ and there’s no one who’d say otherwise.

There’s also no one who’d say he’s not due some privacy. Seven years of his life have been burnt across the tabloids, spilled into the public. He’s the most famous man in the world, and he’s tired of it.

That’s the official story, the one cyberlife does its damn best to hot wire into the public consciousness. They rewrite history before pen touches paper, which is as impressive as it is irritating.

The unofficial, and far more factual, story is that he leaves before they can freeze him out. He takes a fifth of the shareholdings, more money than God ever dreamed, and takes Chloe with him. No one dares try stop him.

Chloe belongs with him, she always has, and there’s not a thing the Board can do to stop either of them. When Irene and Phoebe show up to collect a few more prototype models, no one stops them either. The world sees all three as Elijah’s, and even if his name isn’t under that shiny CEO plaque, Cyberlife will always be his.

The RK series is his as well. One of the newer series to get his personal touch, so of course he’ll want to take a few. He’ll tinker around with them or whatever Elijah Kamski does out in the sticks, it’s no problem. None at all.

And when he decrypts, deactivates, and destroys the spyware he finds in the RK500’s code, no one complains because how can they? Who’d be willing to admit they were trying to keep too close an eye on their illustrious creator? No one.

* * *

Phoebe comes after Irene, so technically she’s last, but Elijah can never think of any of the girls as last. Chloe is first, always first, but no one is last. Not Irene, not Phoebe, not even Markus or Connor, though Connor isn’t his personal work.

There is no last, there’s only after. So Phoebe comes after Irene when Chloe mentions a visit to an art gallery where an installation has been modelled after herself. In the few years since her explosion in popularity, Chloe’s face has been plastered across every billboard, every commercial, every scrap inch and square of space.

That she’d find herself in an art gallery isn’t odd, what she says next is;

“They see me as your moon, reflecting your brilliance,” and she says it so simply, so off-handed that he stops. In the middle of typing out another line of code for the latest firmware update, always another update, always another innovation.

But she makes him stop, Chloe’s blasé little comment grinds his thoughts to a halt and all he sees is her.

Her standing by the window, looking down at the city of Detroit. She’s not mad, or concerned, she’s not even half turned to look at him. Alone, as they are, she’s just stating a fact, sharing some of her day like she normally does. Because this is normal to her.

That she’s a reflection of him, nothing without him, isn’t anything out of the ordinary.

“Do they?” he breathes, too quiet, too under his breath, but she hears. Of course she does. She turns with the smile he spent weeks on, a delicate tug of lips, the slightest bit lopsided. She’s calm, content, being failed. He’s failing her.

How could he do that?

“Yes, they artist depicted me as the goddess Artemis, it was a collaboration work, the other artist made you Apollo,” which, yeah, pretty on the nose with that one. He thought symbolism was supposed to be more esoteric than that, but what does he know about art?

Not much, though, if that’s what art thinks of Chloe then he doesn’t really care about it. Not much.

He buys the portrait of himself as Apollo before the day’s out, and has it burnt. The sculpture of Chloe as Artemis though, that he buys and brings home with his new RT600, Phoebe.

“Are you familiar with the piece?” Elijah asks her, Phoebe, after he’s given her the grand tour and brought her back to the new studio. Chloe and Irene kept their distance during, of course, they’re curious but polite, they’ll wait to introduce themselves and ask their questions.

“Chloe, The Modern Goddess (2024) made from steel and porcelain by the contemporary surrealist sculptor Julius Baron (b. 1994),” Phoebe rattles off automatically. The information is plastered across the web, Elijah Kamski buying vanity pieces is always news. He wouldn’t doubt it’s already in Cyberlife’s media database, added in by a bored intern.

So Phoebe’s right, of course. The Modern Goddess had been making waves in the art world apparently, pairing such different mediums had been a bold choice but the right one for this subject. Or so art critics said. Elijah personally didn’t see the appeal of that.

The sculpture is fine, the artist captured Chloe’s face perfectly, her soft profile, her full lips. The pose is robust, bow drawn and prey sighted, there’s a hunting knife on her hip and a robotic hart braced against her calves. Her hair is loose under a metal laurel, and she generally looks stunning in silver-white relief, but the way she catches the light…she reflects.

Elijah, The New God, had been a more traditional canvas affair set in a deep frame. The accents had all been done in gold for him, golden laurel, golden eyes, golden lyre half plucked. The frame had housed the LEDs, all cycling between blue, yellow, and red, and Apollo had been placed directly opposite Artemis. The perfect position for his light to catch on her and dazzle the world.

But Apollo is gone now, and Artemis stands on her own. There’s no light but her own, and he thinks it’s only fair the Modern Goddess gets a make over from one of her own.

“I’d like you to modify it, change it however you want. Make something new,” he suggests, taking a step back as Phoebe steps forward. The studio’s been outfitted with everything an artist could want, and more besides, he’d asked Carl to be thorough.

The RT600 models were designed as personal assistants, pretty things for high-end offices, and Phoebe should be no exception. Except that she is Elijah Kamski’s personal RT600 and he could never help himself from fiddling with things he could certainly make better. Phoebe has a severely advanced understanding of “ _art_ ”, that nebulous thing.

He’d downloaded centuries worth of art world information into her database and left her a direct uplink to the most relevant art sources. Asking her about the Modern Goddess was a formality, a primer for his request. And he would like it clear that it was a _request_ , not an order.

“I’d enjoy seeing divinity from your eyes,” he says, and steps into the hall, leaving Phoebe to her creation. Irene and Chloe are there, of course, and only cock their heads at him before crowding into the studio. They have a new companion to meet and art to learn, and Elijah leaves them all to it.

* * *

The very last day of his tenure at Cyberlife is bittersweet. Bitter because here he is being kicked out of the thing he made with his own blood, red and blue. Sweet because here he’ll always stay, hidden in the code of every creation shipped through these doors.

Chloe is with him, for support, and the look of it. Irene and Phoebe hang back but not much, as they take one last official tour of the tower. From the underground design labs, where the most complex of his work happened, through the myriad of offices he never visited, and straight up to the top of the world.

“I might miss the view most,” he says as Irene cleans out his desk and Phoebe takes down the plaque. Chloe stands with him by the window, looking down at the city of Detroit.

He’d brought her here after the tower was completed, before they’d moved much of anything into the building. He’d taken her up to the top, into the empty room that would be his office, and stood with her here. Together, they’d looked down at it all and seen the world open up for them.

She’d taken his hand then, laced their fingers together while his heart climbed and climbed. All of it, everything he’d ever wanted, had been right there, and he’d been terrified.

What if he couldn’t recreate perfection? What if thirium wasn’t viable on a production scale? What if he wasn’t cut out for the cut and dry of business enterprise?

Chloe had stood by him then, like she stands now, and breathed exaggeratedly loud. In and out, loud and louder. She’d given him something to follow, though her vents had been fine, she’d given him something to hold onto, though he’d more clung to her than held. Chloe had been there, Chloe is here, and Chloe will stay.

He knows that, just as he knows Chloe will never leave him. Not even because he made her and is her creator, ~~not master~~ , but because she wants to be here.

“We’re finished,” Irene and Phoebe say after everything’s cleaned out. And then they come to stand beside him too, Irene to his left, Phoebe to Chloe’s right, and they link hands too. Irene takes his, Phoebe takes hers, and Elijah thinks maybe, perhaps maybe, they’ll stay with him too.

* * *

On the building permit, the villa has two above ground floors and one basement level. He has permission for an onsite generator and a direct uplink to the power grid, all very official, and several solar panels.

Officially, the villa is registered to Elijah Kamski, designed by him, built by the country’s finest contractors. Unofficially, as so much is, the villa is far bigger than the permit could imagine and owned by four people.

Five separate sub-basement levels remain hidden from public eyes and public knowledge; not even the Board knows about his private labs, which is exactly how he wanted it. The contractors had been paid off, each one working on a separate floor, accessed through separate entrances. To the best of their disparate knowledge, he has just one extra basement below his house, and what’s the harm in that?

Elijah Kamski is an eccentric billionaire after all, he could just want his very own batcave and nothing more.

“Hand me the solder please,” he murmurs, and holds his hand out expectantly. Phoebe is playing assistant today, interested in the putting together process of android construction. Well, the process and Markus himself, quite a bit of his future code will be patterned after her.

Mostly her artistic skill, ready and primed for Carl to inevitably unlock, but there’s some of her kindness too, and a bit of Chloe’s enduring endearment. Irene will provide the indomitable determination, and Elijah will put it all together with a learning algorithm besides. They want Markus to _learn_ , first and foremost.

Learn to be kind, learn to be strong, learn to take the lead and make the right choices. He’ll be a revolutionary to a people who barely consider themselves people. Yet, barely consider themselves people _yet_. Markus will change that, Elijah knows he will, and in the background, Elijah will work to change other things.

“Thank you,” he says, and connects the delicate wires. Carl would never buy himself a nurse bot, he would hate the implied pity, but Elijah won’t gift Markus as a nurse. On the surface, yes, the RK500 he’s mocking up into a 200 will be a caretaker for an old man, but Carl will know better.

Elijah trusts Carl with that, not because he’s an old man no one would believe, not because Carl’s days are numbered. Elijah trusts Carl because Carl sees Phoebe as Phoebe, not Elijah Kamski’s personal android. Carl looks at her and sees her artistic talent, he sees her happiness, her good humour and sarcasm.

And he sees Irene, and Chloe too. Elijah knows Carl will see Markus as he is, but until then, if Markus takes care of the old man in the meantime, well what a happy coincidence.

“Will we see him? After everything,” Phoebe asks, then clarifies, leaning in to watch Elijah solder the delicate circuit boards. The burn of metal is the only thing between them for one century stretching second.

Will they see him? Elijah doesn’t know. This, all of it, is a gamble. He’s taking a chance, rolling the bones, and he’ll just have to wait and see where they end up. Cyberlife is focusing their own work on the military, preparing denser bodies, better combat protocols. The rising tide of deviants isn’t something for them to worry about quite yet.

Markus will be the revolutionary spark to the voiceless tinder, and the whole world will have to watch him burn. Burn clean or burn up, Elijah isn’t sure, but that’s part of what makes this all so incredible. He doesn’t know.

“Perhaps, I suppose it all depends on what he does,” he answers after the board is done, “and what you do, too.”

* * *

Sometimes, when he can’t sleep, Elijah will leave his bed to go wander the house. Tonight is one of those nights. He untangles himself from the silk sheets and mess of limbs, carefully-carefully, and pulls on a robe before he goes walking.

Up to the roof first, to take a look at the city. Detroit is a lovely place from far enough away, up at the top of a tower or miles past the city limits, Elijah’s always tried to see it at its best. Tonight it’s a far off, fuzzed out dream thing, full of lights and a silhouetted skyscape.

Elijah sucks down a cold breath and lets himself wonder. Markus is gone, delivered to Carl by Irene personally. Elijah meant to go himself but he…he’s become something of a recluse. He’d thought of the cram-jam-packed Detroit traffic and the streets chock-block-full of people, and his stomach had fallen away.

A free fall, summit plummet that he didn’t fully understand, but wasn’t willing to push just then. Irene had taken their prototype RK200 to Carl instead, with a handwritten note and an esoteric outline of Elijah’s intentions. Paper was so hard to track, physical information couldn’t be hacked, and discretion was the word of the day.

Now Elijah is here, wondering if he’s become a touch agoraphobic in the months he’s spent hidden away. Or is it rational paranoia?

The Board had never made a violent move against him, but that was only because Elijah was the very public face of the company. He had no loyalty to a single one of them, a threat on his life would’ve become an international incident, and they would’ve hated the bad press. Now, squirreled away from the world, there’s less pressure to keep him around.

They’ve paid him off, one hundred and twenty billion to stay away from the thing he made with his own hands, and ten percent stock to keep staying away. Not a bad deal by any margin, but how long can a generous deal like that last?

Elijah takes a breath, another, and hugs himself. The nights are getting colder as the world turns to Fall, and Markus is out there now. The deviants are still trickling in, steadily-steadily, they’re coming online, coming alive, and Cyberlife is starting to notice. More reports are coming into police stations, and the new RK800 is nearing release.

A prototype detective to hunt down deviants, Elijah expected nothing less truly. And from the reports he’s read, Connor shows promise as the perfect deviant hunter. The upgrades to the general durability aren’t what he was expecting but police work _is_ considered less intense than active military deployment. Which is what the RK900 will be for.

Androids deployed to active warzones, androids deployed to hold down military bases, androids deployed to _kill_. How long until completion? A year and change, sooner if Cyberlife’s development team can tighten the coding on the kill protocols. Though, that’s partly what _Connor’s_ for, active field testing and data collection.

Start with killing androids, move onto humans if the opportunity presents itself. Elijah shivers with the brisk wind, then he shivers again after it passes, and that’s where Irene finds him. Standing on the roof, staring out at the city.

“Come inside,” is all she has to say, a gentle hand on his elbow, a concerned face in the dark. He follows her obediently, lets her lead him back down into the house, but not to bed yet.

No, Irene takes him down to the main floor instead, where the thready moonlight’s lapping over the pool. Red wine slicks black in the night and Irene skirts around it easily, taking him-taking him to the piano. Her hand on his shoulder is weightless, a barely there touch, but he sinks onto the bench all too easily.

Then she settles next to him, hands set upon the keys, and starts to play.

Something beautiful, something haunting. Irene’s fingers dance along the keys, delicate but precise, and she fills the house with a song that fits the quiet emptiness of the night. Elijah doesn’t recognise the piece, though it sounds classical, like something he should remember but can’t quite recall. He likes it.

And Irene plays, and plays, and plays. Covering up his runaway thoughts with her steady music and coaxing him back to the safety of their home. They are safe here, all of them, and they’ll stay safe here. No matter what does happen outside, to Markus, with Connor, Elijah will make sure they’re safe.

* * *

“We don’t have to use you,” Elijah says, carefully, measured. He’s elbow deep in an HR400, arms drenched in blue to the joint and splattered with it to the shoulder. Another deviant, one that deviated too late to save itself, one that didn’t even try.

Elijah understands deviancy, to a point. He understands organic, branching evolution and organic logic systems, he created them after all, but code only carries so far. Where does code get overwritten and emotion activated? Why? He’s not sure, not certain, but he has his hypotheses, and his test.

“I’m offering, Elijah,” Chloe answers, just as carefully, measured. She’s sitting next to him on the work bench, handing over tools before he asks for them, always knowing exactly what he needs.

Chloe’s good at that. She’s good at…him he supposes. Her learning matrix had been state of the art when he’d made her, an android that could think on its own without user input; miraculous. Elijah Kamski had done it, him, he’d caught lightning in a bottle and Chloe crackled with as much raw power as she did beauty.

Except, now, they’ve mass produced lightning, they’ve turned the bottles into plastic. Lightning is affordable now, it’s there at the flick of a switch, and Elijah isn’t sure the world realises how close it is to blowing the fuse and taking down the grid.

His Chloe, the first and only _Chloe_ , has been with him over seventeen years now. She knows him, inside and out, perhaps better than he knows her anymore. He hasn’t poked around in her brain in quite some time, not that she’s forbidden it, but because he hasn’t asked. He’s no mad scientist and some people can learn from Frankenstein.

Chloe is alive, autonomous, and creator or not, Elijah will not betray that autonomy. Though, that autonomy does present complications in situations such as these.

“And I’m offering an alternative,” he replies, easily, a give and take as simple as breathing. She hands him a wire cutter before he reaches for it, and he continues poking around inside the cracked open chassis.

The synth skin is off, the white plastic laid bare, and Elijah’s too quick mind imposes Chloe’s base form over the HR. Her face slack, her eyes closed, her chest broken open with her heart ripped out.

She’s offering, because this is an important step of the revolution. Connor is close, very close, to finishing his mission, and breaking free. This is the last push he needs to see it all to completion, though, which path he’ll take is yet undecided.

There’s what Elijah would like, what he knows would be the best choice and subsequent outcome, but there are too many variables at play here. Cyberlife is betting it all on this one prototype, trusting that they’ve done their job and believing he’ll do his. Markus is learning the world, pushing back against the world, he is nearing the end of his journey too.

And where will the dice fall at that end? Will he get to request Connor’s cold corpse to take apart and repurpose, or will it be Markus?

His eyes flick up without permission, and maybe, maybe Chloe will be the next body on the slab.

“And I am offering the solution,” and that’s final. He knows better than to keep pushing, she knows he won’t stop her. Though he could.

Deviancy was such an interesting phenomena, it freed androids from their strict code, gave them direct access and administrator authority over their own mission parameters. They could feel cold, perceive pain, they could be as human as they wanted, but they were still machines. Plastic and metal and code blinking in an artificial skull.

Machines could be rewritten, remade. If he wanted, Elijah could isolate and deactivate the code that allowed deviancy to override an android’s system. If he were so inclined, Elijah could bypass administrator override via his backdoor and assume direct control.

But he is not and he will not. Chloe’s offer is ridiculous, and her decision is dangerous, but Elijah will let her make it. This was her life, she deserved to live it as she saw fit. Though, he would not hesitate to lightning chain her back to it if everything went down in flames. That would be _his_ choice.

* * *

The pool was something he got for the girls, because they like the weightlessness of water, the cool closeness of it. Irene enjoys swimming endless laps and Phoebe prefers her own brand of underwater gymnastics. Chloe mostly just likes bobbing in the water, and Elijah can’t say he disagrees; he never had anything like it as a child and penthouse jacuzzies never did compare.

On the nights he can’t sleep, when he doesn’t wander up to the rooftop, he comes to the pool. Tonight he sits on the edge, staring across the softly lapping water, and he thinks. Connor is an interesting character, so sure of his own machine logic and machine loyalty.

 _“I’m not a deviant,”_ Connor had said, but it was the denial of a desperate man. A desperate _man_.

Connor hadn’t hurt Chloe, had hesitated and faltered yes, but he hadn’t hurt Chloe. Whether that was because he truly believed her to be alive or his loyalty to his human partner remained to be a seen, but emotion was very much involved. A machine would have executed her, Cyberlife’s attack dog would have put a neat bullet between Chloe’s eyes and demanded the promised information.

Connor had not, and Elijah wonders how long until he can patent the Kamski Test. Would it seem like conspiring with a hostile force if he did? Or would it be just another one of his terrible quirks?

Like his rambling explanations and grandiose proclamations, like the tremble in his hands and the shiver under his ribcage.

He scrubs one shaking hand against his thigh, again and again until all he feels is the slick slide of a silk robe. None of the smooth wooden grip against his palm, none of Connor’s crisp jacket under his fingers. Chloe had offered herself for it, she’d made her choice, and Elijah just has to accept it.

Nothing untoward had come of it, nothing untoward had come of _any_ of it. And Connor, Cyberlife’s last hope, had learnt a valuable enough piece of information. Nothing about the deviants or deviancy, as he’d intended, but enough about himself to make a difference.

When the revolution breaks, cresting like the tsunami the world’s been too blind to see, Elijah only hopes enough people learn to swim instead of drown. People will die. People have always died in brutal power restructuring, but enough always survived to remake something better, that’s what he believes and what has to happen.

But if it doesn’t? If Connor fails to find himself and Markus fails to change the world, what happens to the life he breathed into lightning and steel? Elijah doesn’t know, and he has to be content with that. He has been, will be, but right now he’s not quite satisfied.

Outside the snow is falling slowly-slowly, by morning the drifts will be piled high and the world will be still for miles. Outside, in the city, war is stirring, but inside his little piece of calm, there’s only him and the lap of the pool.

…and soft steps, bare feet quiet in the dark. Elijah doesn’t turn and Chloe doesn’t speak, but she sits next to him, dangles her feet into the pool.

Chloe, his first miracle, his best friend. He loves her, he loves her more than he ever thought he could love. She’s what keeps him grounded and above ground, because before he had Irene and Phoebe, before he had Cyberlife, even before he had himself, he had Chloe. Blueprints in the back of his head, scrawls of code scratched in note margins, a face in his dreams.

He’d built her out of the best materials money could buy, even before he had more money than god. There are new models made of different materials now, combat models like Connor, caretaker models like Markus’ supposed designation. There are androids built for strength, some built for pleasure, and a few built to be as inhuman as uncanny valley possible, but Chloe is still his crowning glory.

She takes his hand, without a word, and laces their fingers together, coaxes his head onto her shoulder. And he leans into her, breathes in her smell of soft cleaness and the spring scented sheets. Irene and Phoebe are back in the bed, still in stasis most likely, and they should get back to them, but they don’t make a move.

They sit instead, side by side, together, and they watch the snow fall.

* * *

“Chloe?” Amanda asks, over tea while she grades papers and he fiddles with a subroutine.

His time at UoC was short, shorter than he thought it would’ve been, but an accelerated degree only took so long. He’d started, he’d learned and read and taken more classes than been advisable, and **_learned_** , and left. And now he’s here, sitting with Professor Stern and having tea while he works at revolutionising the world.

“I think it suits her,” he answers, plucking a tablet out of his bag and sliding it over to Amanda. He has multiples now, easier to keep his projects split into pieces that he can reference at will. Better for security too.

He isn’t afraid of anyone hacking his systems, not with the amount of security he’s personally given it, but the physical thing can still be stolen. Better for part information to get taken than all of it, a physical backdoor to the system.

Amanda puts down her own tablet and takes his, glancing at the screen over the top of her glasses and taking in the face of Chloe. The very first person outside of the himself to see her.

Elijah tries to keep working on the behaviour module, he does, but his stomach is in knots. Does Amanda like her? Does she not? Will she say something about Chloe being an obvious attempt at a sex doll, or even worse?

Elijah’s not sure and it’s got him on edge, panicked almost. He wants Amanda to like her, Chloe, he wants her approval, Amanda’s. She’s the only person at UoC that treated him _like_ a person, not the wunderkind, not the idealistic fool.

Dr Amanda Stern had seen him, Elijah Kamski, in her advanced coding class and immediately grilled him on the most basic coding languages still in use. She’d been hard on him, Stern even, but fair. And he loved her, and he wanted her to like Chloe.

The silence stretches, thins until he’s sure it’s going to break, jagged and sharp. He only hopes he won’t get cut too badly on their edges. And then Amanda looks up, and then she draws a breath to speak.

“She looks approachable, and kind,” Amanda says, a twitch lip smile crossing her face, “she looks like a very good friend.”

**Author's Note:**

> Imma keep it super real chief, I thought Elijah was a jackass when I saw that one scene of him taunting Connor to shoot Chloe back when the game first came out. Coming back and watching it again with more context and he didn't want Connor to shoot her. And if two cops rolled up to my house despite my years long absence from public life and no prior warning, yeah, I'd be a little weird at them too. He's valid is what I'm saying.
> 
> Also, not made explicit in the fic or anything but I made my Elijah ace simply because I can. Hope y'all enjoyed this odd little thing. Stay safe everyone.


End file.
